Louisiana's Landrieu faces bribery complaints over education earmark

The watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington filed complaints this week with the Department of Justice, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas seeking an investigation into whether Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) violated federal bribery law by including a $2 million earmark for Voyager Expanded Learning in a bill four days after receiving $30,000 in campaign contributions from company executives and their relatives. The organization also requested a Senate Ethics Committee probe into Landrieu's action, which occurred in November 2001. According to CREW:

Randy Best, a top Republican donor and Bush pioneer, founded Voyager, an educational products company and rather than selling the company's reading program to school districts, hired lobbyists to obtain earmarks for it. Although the House had appropriated $1 million for his program for the D.C. public schools, Best still needed a Senate sponsor. A lobbyist arranged a meeting with Sen. Landrieu, the chair of the Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the District of Columbia, to press for an earmark. Shortly after Sen. Landrieu met with Best, a member of Sen. Landrieu's staff asked him to hold a fundraiser for her and he agreed. After the fundraiser, she received $30,000 in campaign contributions from individuals associated with the company -- donors who had never before contributed to her. Four days after she received the money, she inserted an earmark into a D.C. appropriations bill, giving D.C. schools $2 million to buy Best's reading program, which was unproven and had not been requested by the school system.

Best, a Texas businessman who made a fortune selling cheerleading equipment to schools, has earned millions off contracts awarded under the Bush administration's Reading First initiative, according to ABC News. Congressional investigators have charged that the administration awarded the Reading First contracts based on politics rather than merit, and the Department of Education's Inspector General released a report [PDF] last year documenting conflicts of interest and other problems with the program.

This is not the first time that Best has been accused of using ethically questionable practices to promote his business interests, according to Texans for Public Justice:

The Dallas Observer, for example, reported that Voyager hired the school superintendents of Dallas and Richardson, Texas, after their districts awarded major contracts to Voyager. Then-Governor George Bush received $45,400 from Best and other Voyager sources around the time that he endorsed spending $25 million in state funds on after-school programs. Georgia state School Superintendent Linda Schrenko went behind the backs of her state Board of Education to award a $1.1 million grant to Richmond County for a reading program in 2001. A month after the county awarded that contract to Voyager, top company executives contributed $56,750 to Schrenko's failed gubernatorial bid.

Landrieu's office released a statement [PDF] calling CREW's complaint "factually flawed" and pointing to the senator's longstanding support of the Voyager program. But CREW fired back with its own statement noting that Landrieu's response failed to address the key allegation: that it looks like she inserted an earmark in return for money.

"Senator Landrieu appears to have traded a $2 million earmark for $30,000 in campaign contributions," said CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan. "The Department of Justice and the Senate Ethics Committee should look into this matter immediately. Members of Congress need to understand that trading earmarks for campaign funds is illegal -- no exceptions."